up from the floor and marched her down the narrow stairway. Brendan eased open the back closet panel at the bottom and they brought her through the dark closet, out the door into Paul Folger’s tiny, white room.
They muscled her toward the bed and she stiffened, fighting them.
“That’s right,” Anton told her. “I think you might be more of service to us here.”
Anton threw back the coverlet of the bed and for one terrible second her mind went to the worst …
No no God please no don’t hurt me don’t—
Then something at the edge of the bed brushed against her calf. She gasped and twisted in Anton’s grasp.
The horror she felt on looking down was instant and complete. Welded to the metal frame of the bed were three thick iron rings.
For restraints.
There were three identical protuberances on the right side of the bed, beside the wall—which was actually forcing the bed out several inches away from the wall, instead of it lining up flush.
Somehow it was those iron rings that made it real: Paul Folger’s long years of confinement. The room seemed to close in on her, with a rush of all that it had seen, all that it had absorbed, the sodden, stinking madness—the horror …
She bit back a scream. She wanted to scream, to scream her lungs out, but she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of her muffled, impotent howls.
Anton pushed her down on the bed and held her down. “Do it,” he snapped at Brendan.
“We don’t … have to hurt her,” Brendan mumbled.
“Don’t be a fool,” Anton said sharply, but his voice never rose. “Tie her.” And Brendan did, loosening the rope from her hands and, as Anton held her, looping it through the iron rings, fastening her arms by her sides, one on each side of the bed.
When Brendan stepped back, Anton straightened and looked down on Laurel with nothing like lust, or pleasure at her captivity—only the detachment a scientist would show a lab animal. “I trust your experience here will be illuminating. For you—and all of us.” He glanced around the room with an enigmatic smile. “I think we are in for an interesting night indeed. Perhaps even—life-altering.”
Brendan gave Laurel what seemed for a moment like a stricken look—ambiguous with misery—then the men moved away from the bed, and out.
She heard the lock turn in the door.
She was dizzy and gagging, fighting to breathe through her nose. Her eyes darted frantically around the room.
The room was stark and cold, the magnetic malevolence was heavy in the air.
Scream kick bounce shake make noise get them here make them help. Her mind was shouting at her, fast, panicked thoughts.
No.
Why?
Because Tyler and Katrina can’t help you, she found herself answering herself coldly. You’ll only put them in more danger. Shut up for now and figure out what you’re going to do.
She breathed through her nose, breathed through the heart-pounding panic, until her pulse slowed. Her eyes went again to the side of the bed, to the rings. So Brendan knew that, too, had known from the beginning that it was true, about Paul Folger, that they … they kept him here, that he was what they said he was… .
Get hold of yourself. Now is not the time to freak out.
Brendan had lied to her, betrayed her. It’s worse than with Matt. That was just an engagement he broke off. This is jeopardy. This is criminal.
And then the anger came, and that was good.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The anger rose and fell in waves, and she rode it like the gentle rocking of a boat on the ocean. It was both calming and powerful. She breathed and burned as she lay tied to the bed of a madman, and tried to force her thoughts into some kind of order.
Think. Think. Think.
You have to get out of here, get Tyler and Katrina out before they start that séance. That cannot happen. It must not happen.
How can I get out?
She yanked and pulled at the ropes. She could move her hands, her fingers, but her arms were bound tightly.
She twisted on the bed, looking around the room. Her eyes fell on the circle cut into the window.